


Bombshell

by innerbrat



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Female!Bucky, Gen, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:59:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4006720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innerbrat/pseuds/innerbrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Bucky is a) female and b) a pilot. Nope, I don't know what I was thinking, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Carry Moonbeams Home in a Jar

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always to my fabulous beta, ryfkah.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a fun afternoon of trespassing changes a life

**August 1932**

 It was a stupid, crazy, stupid idea. And this was why it was so great.

>  ( _Knock. Knockknock_.
> 
>  “Good afternoon, Betty.”
> 
>  “Afternoon, Mrs. Rogers. Is...”
> 
>  “Hey, Bet, hang on – Mom, where's my sketchbook? Right, I'll see you later, have a good afternoon.”
> 
>  “You're having him for dinner, right?”
> 
>  "Ma insisted. You'll be working late?”
> 
>  “All this week. Give my love to your family, okay?”)

It was a familiar feeling of ambivalence: annoyance at Steve for thinking it up and having the nerve to go through with it, regardless of how dangerous it was; and that jump of excitement in her gut that was directly because of the danger. Not to mention the flash of envy, because she'd never have the guts or the imagination to come up with something like this.

> (“You want to do _what?_ ”
> 
> “It's not that bad. You make it sound like we'd be doing something illegal.”
> 
>  “We _would_ be. Ever heard of trespassing? What if we got caught?”
> 
>  “Then we run.”
> 
>  “No, _I_ run. You get an asthma attack.”
> 
>  “That's my problem, isn't it?”)

Crazy and stupid, maybe, but she'd be damned if she was going to let Steve Rogers have all that fun on his own. It kept her away from looking after her kid siblings, and beat an afternoon of watching Steve trying to pick fights with bullies in their own neighbourhood. Still, Betty was feeling the weight of her return trolley fare in her pocket, reminding her of the fare she’d already paid coming out. Steve was certainly feeling it too, and if it wasn't for him she'd have opted to walk or cycle all the way. She couldn't do that to him,though.

With both feet planted on the floor, she swung on the handle like a little kid with the motion of the trolley, and glared at her friend. He grinned back at her like he could see only smiles on her face.

“You know this is a crazy idea.”

“You mentioned that.”

“Any way I can talk you out of it?”

“No way.”

She stared at him, unable to keep up the glare for long against his ridiculous smile. In the end, she felt the corner of her mouth give way.

“We can't be long. I have to be back to help with dinner. Jerk.”

It wasn't just dinner: Teddy was at that age where he needed two pairs of eyes on him at all times, and Martha was still too young to look out for him. Betty figured that if it came to it, mother could just nag Jimmy into doing his bit, but Betty was the oldest: watching the baby should be her job. And even though her mother adored Steve, and they were excursing with the permission and implicit approval of both mothers, Betty worried about what she was leaving at home.

But maybe that was why it had felt so important to go along with him on this. Because they had started to worry about this sort of thing: the fares in their pockets, the chores at home. They were both running out of time to be the crazy kids who grabbed the trolley downtown for no real reason, the boy and the girl who got to be friends without having to listen to capital-T-and-italics _Talk._

Rather than continue the conversation, Betty and looked away from Steve, only to end up staring at their reflections in the window. She wondered if she shouldn't start wearing lipstick. Her reflection wrinkled its nose at her - more like a bratty kid than a Hollywood starlet. She was taller than Steve, not that she’d ever been anything but. Now she’d started growing, though, the difference was marked. Steve still looked three years younger than he was; if Jimmy had been with them, bystanders might assume she was chaperoning the two of them, rather than two friends of the same age with a little tag-along. 

Meanwhile, Betty was getting older, in time and in body, and these adventures out to the corners of the borough were getting less and less like the adventurous scrapes of a wayward girl, and more an unladylike distraction from things the world told her she should be doing. There would come a time very soon when she’d grow out of socks, and grazed knees would no longer be acceptable – even if she did get them by standing in the way of Steve and the boys he kept trying to pick fights with. They were never coward enough to raise their fists to a girl, but a few of them would push her down out of the way. And then she’d just have to wait until they got bored with dealing out beatings, and she could patch Steve up like she would one of her brothers.

And Steve – Steve, the little shit, he would never stop picking the damned fights even when he knew she'd wade in after him.

He was looking at her. She'd been whistling softly to herself without noticing ( _The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea:_ “I oughta cross you off my list, but when you come knocking at my door...”) and now she glanced at him, and her smile returned. Goddammit, though, if he didn't make life _fun_. Sure, she couldn't blame him for all the stupid things she'd done in her life so far, but there was something about that sideways smile – not to mention his constantly simmering righteous anger – that gave her courage when she wanted it.

Home was responsibility and housework and siblings. Steve was freedom and excitement and the city outside the four walls of her apartment. Did she really have to give that up just because she was giving up her undershirt?

Nuts to that: Betty decided to make this ridiculous day trip last as long as she could stretch it to. Jimmy could step up and watch his little brother if they weren’t back.

The two of them were the only passengers when the trolley reached the end of the line. As it rattled to a stop, she raised an eyebrow at Steve, asking him one last time if he was sure about this, but Steve was already heading towards the door, his hand stretched out to her. She grabbed his wrist – her hand still able to close over it completely – and allowed herself to be tugged off onto the sidewalk.

From there, it was just a short walk to Floyd Bennett Field. Steve's hair-brained scheme was this: find a hole in the fence, push their way through, and pretend like they were supposed to be there all along, as a cover for watching actual aircraft up close and personal. His excuse was that he wanted to make sketches for a comic book idea he had, but Betty figured it was actually just because he wanted to do something stupid. She was actually impressed with how poorly thought out it was.

But it was a plan better suited to Steve than to her, as was made clear when he found the expected small hole. Ever the gentleman, he crouched on his hands and knees and scrambled through first, ready to take the full force of the punishment for trespassing just in case. Full of himself and his own chivalry, Steve ignored Betty’s protests until he was already through.

“Steve…”

“It’s clear. Hey, come on through, Bet. This is incredible. I can see all the planes.”

“Steve.” Betty crouched, resting one hand on the dirt, and peered through at him. “Steve, I can’t crawl through this.”

“What? Sure you can. I did.”

“I can’t get through without lying on the floor like you did, and that will ruin my – it’ll ruin everything.”

Betty gestured down, taking in her dress, her socks, her shoes. Day trips out to who-knows-where with Steve, her mother would forgive. Ripping a dress and adding to the darning pile: that would just be something else for Betty to do herself. Steve, obviously, hadn’t thought of that. ( _And why_ , she thought sullenly, _should he?_ )

She stood up, almost expecting Steve to come scrambling back through to her. But he just stuck his head back through and looked along the fence.

“You'll have to go in the front.”

“What? No. Steve!”

“No,” Steve said thoughtfully. “It'll be easy. You're smart, and a girl. Just hold your head up and act like you belong.”

“I'll get caught.”

“Com'on, Bet. We can't just go home.”

Betty stood up, and used her heel to pointedly kick dirt into his face to show exactly what she thought of him and his stupid plans.

“Bet!”

She dusted down her coat and dress and used her fingers to comb her curls down. She was here now, and she wasn't going to troop all the way back home  - not when she was so close. Looking a bit more presentable, and maybe not like she just tried to sneak in under a fence, she turned and walked the perimeter, to where the wooden fence gave way to wire, so the splendour of the main buildings could be seen on the approach.

"Hold your head up,” she told herself,  “act like you belong.” And they would just assume she did? She quickly made it a thought rather than a muttered prayer, and walked on, softly whistling Sophie Tucker's  _I ain't Taking Orders from No One_.

At first it looked like it worked: Betty wandered straight through the gate at the front of the field, and past the beautiful red brick and white building with its airport tower looking down on the concrete runways. She kept Steve’s position mentally on her right and walked towards the long, low brick-and-iron building under the sign saying **_CITY OF NEW YORK DOCKS FLOYD BENNETT FIELD_**. There, hiding under the steel girders holding up the roof, she could see a variety of planes, and the temptation to get close was strong –Steve was nowhere near this close to the planes, and the smell of oil was surprisingly enticing.

She resisted that urge,  and made herself adopt her best “frustrated sister” scowl – something that with two kid brothers AND Steve, she had a lot of practice in. Wearing it proudly, she marched straight past the hangar, looking around as if she knew who she was looking for and he’d be in trouble when she found him. She told herself a story: she was the daughter of a famous aviator, and had every right to be here, to drag him home to Ma and the babies.

She walked unchallenged past a knot of male pilots laughing in a cloud of cigar smoke, and made it out to the field. There – she realized she couldn’t find Steve at all. He had been right there, she was sure of it: just along the fence, which she realised was farther than she had expected. The planes had distracted her too much.

Rather than give in to looking in any way lost, she leaned against the wall of the hangar and folded her arms, as if waiting patiently for “Pa” to land and join her. Maybe it was a great act, or maybe it was transparent as hell, because after only a few minutes one of the men she had passed came over and stood right next to her.

He was barely a man himself, maybe twenty or younger, but carried a cigar in his mouth under a slick little moustache. He carried goggles and a hood in one hand, but his perfect slicked hair suggested he hadn’t put it on yet today. He gave her a sly smile – not one of Steve's trust-me smirks, but one that suggested he knew more about her than she knew herself, even before saying hello.

“Interested in planes, are you?”

Fully aware that she wouldn’t be able to lie convincingly, Betty gave a noncommittal shrug. “They’re okay.”

“You do know this is a private airfield?”

“Yeah, I know.”

He was looking at her intensely, and Betty found herself struggling to keep from squirming, hoping Steve wasn’t watching in case he got the wrong idea. She didn’t need him coming in and getting into a fight. But she said nothing, waited for the rich guy to continue the conversation.

Surprising her, he looked back over his shoulder to his friends, one of whom raised a challenging eyebrow and nodded meaningfully at Betty. Had they been talking about her?

“Listen…” she started, willing to jump up and run back out, find Steve, get the heck out of here, but he cut her off by raising a finger before removing his cigar and putting it out on the wall next to her.

“You want to learn to fly, is that it?”

Betty stopped short, staring at him. Of all the things, this was the last she expected him to say. He ignored her silence, apparently taking it as agreement.

“No point loitering up the airfield if you’re not going to learn a skill. Come on, I’m sure we’ve got a hood that will fit you.”

She trailed after him into the hangar, arms folded defensively across her chest. “You’re not really gonna teach me to fly?”

“Is that a problem?”

Betty could not shake the feeling that she was being set up for some elaborate prank. She looked over her shoulder at the men whom he had been talking to, and back at the flyboy.

He grinned rakishly at her. “Okay, I admit it. I have an ulterior motive.”

Betty stepped back, her chin rising. “If you lay a finger on me, I will scream, and my man…”

He laughed – outright _laughed_ at her. “Oh, you’re sure to grow up to be a bombshell, but you’re what… sixteen?”

“Fifteen.”

“Even worse. No look, sister. The thing is, I built that plane over there.” He nodded towards a plane Betty couldn’t really distinguish from any others, and continued, “And was just boasting that it handles so smoothly and the controls are so intuitive I could teach anyone to fly it. I’ve got money riding on this, you see.”

Betty narrowed her eyes at him, and carefully looked him up and down. His pants were immaculate, his leather looked new. He dressed like someone who could maybe afford to lose a bet, and the sideways tilt of his moustache looked inclined to agree with that assessment. But then, she looked him in the eyes and thought they looked a little more intelligent than reckless. Like maybe he was only pretending not to care about money, and really didn't particularly want to lose. Betty thought over her options. She could call him on his obvious bullshit, gather Steve up and get the trolley home in time to help with dinner.

Or she could play along, maybe get into trouble, but maybe actually fly an actual airplane.

It wasn’t a tough decision, when it came down to it.

“The name’s Stark, by the way,” her would-be tutor announced while in the process of finding her the promised flight jacket. “Howard. What do I call you, Bombshell?”

“Betty,” she said blankly, and quickly added: “Elizabeth Ross Barnes. Everyone calls me Betty.”

“Patriots, your folks?”

Betty shrugged, decided not to mention her sister's middle name was Washington.

Stark handed her a jacket, gave her a long look over, apparently trying to fit the name to the girl in front of him. Then he turned and strode out to the field, leaving her to follow behind him.

The cockpit was small, even though it was apparently designed for two people with the seats arranged one behind the other. When Betty sat in the front seat and craned her neck to look behind, she wondered where exactly Mr. Stark’s legs were going to go. With a moment of shock, she realised that the only way he could fit would be for each of his calves to go either side of her own hips. That, combined with the fact that she’d had to hitch her skirt up two inches to get around the joystick between her knees, made her wonder exactly how stupid she was being.

But Stark didn’t sit in just yet, and nor did he give any impression of wanting to prey on headstrong and careless young women. He knelt on top of the wing from which he’d just helped Betty climb into the cockpit, and leaned over her shoulder to point at the instrument panel in front of her. He smelled of pomade and cigarette smoke - not exactly the same brand as her father’s, and probably with some cologne mixed in. Most of all, though, he smelled of gasoline.

“Okay, pay attention, because it’s going to be harder to point this out in the air,” he said, his smirk and jovial tone replaced by something serious, but passionate. “Air speed indicator, altimeter, gyro compass, attitude indicator, turn-and-slip, artificial horizon.” With each title, he tapped at one of the dials on the panel with his index finger, with no pause in between to explain what any of these things meant.

“What?” Betty said when he was done.

He went over them again, this time much more slowly.

It was complicated and made no natural sense, and in the fifteen or so minutes it took to talk her through the ‘simple, intuitive’ controls, she almost walked away. But then he was climbing in behind her and she was concentrating so hard she didn't care about his legs either side of hers. And then they were racing down the runway, and when the air seemed to scoop her up by her wings and throw her into another world, Betty’s breath caught in her throat. Half a second later she was caught by something heavy, something solid, which she suddenly realised was the _air_ underneath the plane wings, and her breath came back to her.

The next thing she heard was her own laughter, and then Mr Stark’s, which broke off sharply as she almost crashed the rotten thing.

“Holy shit!” She probably said that five or six times on her first flight. Later she wouldn't remember saying anything else.

But she was still laughing, out of exhilaration but also out of fear and embarrassment, half an hour later when she came tumbling down to a rough but safe landing.

And Steve was standing by the runway, red faced and wheezing from chasing them down.

“What were you thinking?” He didn't give himself anytime to see if Betty was actually okay, but lunged past her to Stark. Betty stepped between them immediately

“Steve.”

“He almost got you killed!”

“ _Steve_.”

It took a second to calm him down, and she worried that time that his asthma would show itself. But he did calm, and looked a lot less like he was going to try and kill Stark (and her) right in front of his flyboy friends.

Stark seemed to think this amusing, but he addressed Betty next, not Steve, saying the second most surprising thing he'd said to her all day.

“Actually, kiddo, you’re a natural,” he said, sounding half surprised himself. “What’d you say about coming back?”

Betty flushed hotly. “I can’t,” she said quickly. “I mean, thank you, Mr. Stark, you’ve no idea what this means to me, but I can’t do this regular. I could never have the time. Or…”

_Or the money._

She flushed hotter, wishing that Steve wasn’t here to see this, but wishing more than they weren’t still being watched by rich strangers. Did anyone have the money these days to lounge around learning to fly? Apparently some people did. Betty didn’t have the slightest idea how much it cost to learn, but she expected it was more than it cost to feed her family of six.

“That’s a shame,” Stark said. “See, I need to train up a new mechanic as well, and I don’t want any of the greasemonkeys around here messing things up by doing it the wrong way. And I thought, if I taught you to fly, I could have a mechanic who knew what they felt like in the air and on the ground. That way, you could pay your own way and I’d have a useful spanner around.”

She stared at him. He smirked back.

“And of course I’d pay you for your time as well. As much as you’d earn working in a store or a factory.”

Steve cut in: “No. You pay her what you’d pay any of your mechanics.”

Amused, Stark raised an eyebrow at Betty. Despite herself, she shrugged and smirked widely.

“Watch it. He will fight you if he has to.”

“Alright,” Stark conceded after a second. “I’ll pay you a _trainee_ mechanic’s wage. For the time you spend on the ground. Flight hours happen in your own time. Think about it.”

Betty gave one last glance to the plane, and grabbed Steve by the wrist again, pulling him away without another word. She was so scared the word would be ‘yes.’

 

* * *

She did the sensible thing and brought the subject up with her parents over dinner. And then looked at her father expectantly, waiting for him to bring her back down safely to the ground.

He chewed on his meat and he looked at his wife.

“Well?” he asked finally. “Can you spare her, Edith?”

“What?” asked Betty.

Her mother ignored her in favour of answering her father. “It means leaving school, of course. But the money wouldn’t do much harm.”

“What?” Betty repeated.

Steve, who had also been expecting a firm no – who had spent the journey home talking Betty into expecting a ‘no,’ – looked up, caught her eye, and smiled.

“I’ll go along if you want, keep an eye on her.”

Jimmy scoffed: “Really think you’re going to protect her honour, Steve?”

Betty reached over and hit Jimmy in the arm hard enough that he yelped in complaint.

“ _Elizabeth_!” Her mother snapped it instinctively, but went on to address Steve: “Don’t be silly, Steve. You stay in school or your Ma will have our heads. But, Betty.”

Now she turned to her daughter, leaning forward across the table with a raised fork.

“You’re a grown woman now, my girl, and you’ve got enough sense between your ears not to let this Stark fellow turn your head. You are going to learn a skill, remember? And earn a wage. You’re not playing at being Amelia Earhart. Engines first, flying when he says you can.”

Betty realised she was staring when her father cleared his throat.

“Answer your mother, girl.”

“Yes, Ma.”

“And you don’t slack off your chores around here.”

“No, Ma.”

“But it’s about time Jimmy pulled his own weight.”

“ _Ma_.” That was Jimmy.

“Yes, Ma.” Betty was grinning so hard she was almost laughing.

“And it’s a long ride on the trolley, so you’d better get to bed early so you’re up in time to tell Mr. Stark you’re taking him up on it, and for god’s sake thank him kindly.”

“Yes, Ma.”

 

* * *

It was even earlier than expected when her mother actually shook her awake, having lit a lamp by the window to supplement the oncoming dawn.

“Ma?”

“Now don’t start getting silly on me,” said her mother, sitting Betty down heavily in a chair. “But I thought I couldn’t let my daughter go off to work without her face on.”

Betty blinked at her through the sleep weighing on her eyes, but didn’t think to object on the grounds that mechanics probably ended up covered in grease anyway.

This was it. This was the woman Betty Barnes was going to become: greasemonkey and flygirl. She’d happily wear make up for that.


	2. The Free Fresh Wind in Her Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is work to be done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ryfkah remains the best beta, even when she makes me rearrange the entire structure, invent three new characters and write about 30% more words.

**April, 1934**

“No no no, don’t you dare, Steve!”

It was a Saturday morning. Until five seconds ago, Betty and Steve had been sitting on Steve’s stoop chatting about school and work and all the things they didn’t always have time for during the week, a regular situation for a regular Saturday.

Now, Betty was scrambling to her feet, grabbing Steve’s arm at the elbow and swinging herself around so she stood in front of him. She put her hands on his shoulders and blocked his way from marching down the street to… actually, who knew where? Floyd Bennett itself, probably. For all the good that would do him.

She pushed at his shoulders again. His weight shifted back far enough that his knees bent and he conceded back to a sitting position, but only because he knew he didn’t have anywhere to take that rage. She sat down next to him, smoothing her skirt back over her knees.

“He tried to kill you,” he protested.

“No,” Betty said. “He tried to get me to kill myself.”

“I don’t see the difference.”

Betty wished she hadn’t told him, now. It hadn’t seemed that big a deal at the time, not really. Just one more obstacle in the normal working life of Betty Barnes, private mechanic to Howard Stark.

Anyway, it was better than it had been.

 

* * *

 

At first, Betty hardly dared show her face at the airfield unless she knew Stark was going to be there. And, for first few months, he was. There was a section of the hangar that he rented all to himself, with three or four planes from his private fleet, and he would meet Betty there every day and talk her through the essential day-to-day maintenance of his planes before taking her up for a flight. He set up a folding table just outside where he’d instruct her in general mechanics, weather patterns and physics, in between scoffing at the terrible state of public education these days. At least until she told him that a girl her age from downtown Brooklyn was lucky to have school at all. Then he’d stopped.

“Don’t tell anyone else,” he muttered once, not looking at her but focused down, on a diagram of a landing gear he was redrawing for her, “but I went to a public school too.”

Betty hoped against hope that the double take she did wasn’t _too_ obvious from across the hangar.

Howard nodded. “Yeah, on the lower East Side.”

Unsure what else to say to that, Betty kept her head bowed over the drawings and said, “I thought you were from Queens.”

“Hey, now. I throw you a bone and you just insult me.”

She appreciated it, though: the sharing of something he was obviously invested in nobody else finding out. And letting her know that she wasn’t quite as alone as she might otherwise feel.

 

* * *

 

 

Stark’s unyielding self-importance and his reputation as one of the richest men in the city acted like an umbrella, shielding Betty from the known disapproval of the other mechanics in the airfield.

The pilots – male and female – looked on her with the same sort of entertained look that Stark did, albeit with more of a patronising air. They called her “Stark’s Little Bombshell” when talking across her to each other, and “sweetheart” to her face. She was an anomaly to them, but a harmless one.

The mechanics despised her. Especially the ones close to her in age. She wasn’t the only female mechanic on the airfield, but she stood out in spite of that. The other women and girls kept their heads down, did their work and put up with a few comments. Betty - well, she had a famous employer, she had obviously no idea what she was doing at first, and she was learning to fly.

Every mechanic and every engineer in Floyd Bennett worked with planes, but not all of them could afford to fly them. And here she was, _Stark’s Little Bombshell_ \- an appellation to be spat as often as not - her only qualification the gall to walk into the airfield as if she belonged in there and to answer back to Howard Stark. And she was getting free flight lessons and free tuition from one of the best mechanical engineers in the world just because she amused him (and who knew what other kind of rumours were circulating?)

Betty sometimes thought that she’d probably hate her too.

“Why me?” She didn’t ask it out loud as often as she thought it, but she asked it often enough. Sometimes she’d be ignored or told to get back to work. Sometimes she’d get an enigmatic smirk and be handed a wrench – which wasn’t exactly the same thing. Sometimes he’d be in the mood to talk.

“Look, Bombshell, you like the work, right?”

“Are you pulling my leg right now?”

He smirked, and she turned away to her work, aware that he'd elaborate if he felt inclined, and if he didn't, nothing in her toolkit could make him do so.

Howard leant beside her on the plane, partly watching her, and partly watching one of the lady pilots shaking her hair out of her flight hood.

“I'm gonna take that as a yes. And you’re a quick study – I saw that straight away and that’s what I need. You think half of these greasemonkeys would understand a third of my designs without me walking them through every single bolt?”

“I need you to walk me through every single bolt,” Betty muttered, aware she was probably flushing slightly: Howard was a better teacher than he’d started out, but he had this terrible habit of making her feel like a total idiot. Worse – sometimes he seemed to enjoy it.

“Give yourself credit, kid. You only need the walking through once in most cases. And that’s where you’re better than anyone with any experience before. I don’t like to brag,” (he lied,) “but my designs here are groundbreaking, and I don’t want some ape with preconceived notions of how an airplane _should_ work messing up my babies. So I needed a fast learner with absolutely no prior knowledge to be unmade.”

Betty rolled her eyes. “Gee, you sound so _proud_ of my ignorance.”

“Ignorance, _and_ the moxie to walk straight into an airfield like she belongs there. No way I was going to let you walk out again without putting you to some use.”

Betty reminded herself that it would be inappropriate to punch him in the shoulder like she did when Steve was being a jerk.

“Let me ask you another question, Bombshell: You ever think of stealing my plans and trying to pass them off as your own work?”

Betty pulled back from her work, and used her wrench to gesture dramatically at the plane. “ _This_ groundbreaking piece of genius?” she asked dryly, handing his words back to him. “Who’d believe me?”

Howard smirked at her. “And you never even thought of it before I suggested it, right?”

“Excuse me for not being an ungrateful jackass.”

But that was all he said on the subject.

 

* * *

 

  
When Howard was with her, she was safe. When she was working on her own, it would start.

“Sure you know what you’re doing there, honey?”

“Have you double checked the oil levels?”

“Do you need help hooking up that oxygen?”

They would practically hover around her, watching her work, making comments and leering at her.

She hated it, hated it, hated it. On more than one occasion in the first year, she considered turning it all in, admitting she didn’t belong. Getting an easy, respectable job weighing up cuts of meat. But then she’d get into a plane, turn her nose up, and feel the earth fall away from her and the sky catch her, lift her up, never failing to make her gasp. She couldn’t work in a store after knowing that feeling.

So when the bad days came, she’d duck into a quiet corner, have herself a good cry, and fix her make-up before heading home, whistling _I’ll Make a Happy Landing_ to herself, all smiles and ‘I had a great day at work.’

Most of the time.

 

* * *

 

  
Hank Doyle was a year younger than Betty, and had been apprenticed at the airfield for a year already when she’d shown up. His father owned an auto shop, and both of them were putting every penny they could save together for Hank’s hope of training as an aeronautical engineer. He’d talked about his plans to learn to fly when he’d finished, but his plan didn’t afford much spare cash for buying flight hours before he’d bought his education. It wasn’t just him; he wasn’t even the leader, but he seemed to go along with it the most enthusiastically.

He was also the one careless enough to be near her whenever her tools went astray. A wrench would go missing. Oil would actually disappear from the tanks of her aircraft. And Doyle would be nearby: not enough to necessarily implicate himself, but enough to be able to see any reaction it got from her. If she was stupid enough to offer him any reaction.

The reason Steve was about to march down to the airfield and pick a fight he couldn’t win was that instead of taking Stark’s newest plane out for a test flight two days before, Betty had been busy cleaning out every trace of sugar she’d found in the engine. Someone had sabotaged her new baby, and the likely suspect was Hank Doyle.

“You’ve got to do something about it, Betty,” Steve told her. “That’s not just a harmless prank, that’s attempted murder.”

“Oh, bullshit,” she said firmly. “It was a stupid dangerous prank, but that happens in the hangar.”

“Do you ever do stuff like that?”

Betty narrowed her eyes at him. “Of course I don’t.”

But that, of course, was his point.

 

* * *

 

She ignored when it was best to do so – and it usually was. Sometimes one of the other women would help her clean up, offer her a nudge to the shoulder, remind her that she wasn’t the only one there. And of course, there were the men who would step in, tell the others to get back to work, threaten them with telling Stark what they were putting his Bombshell through. 

They didn’t need to threaten: Betty told him herself, but casually over lunch when he visited the airfield, a week after telling Steve. There was a cafeteria, but neither of them bought food there. Betty’s Mom packed her a paper-bag lunch – bread from the weekend with peanut butter and chopped egg, the thickness (and sometimes existence) of which depended on what else had been bought that week. Howard carried a steel lunchbox and a fancy thermos flask for coffee. His bread was usually fresh, and he was a fan of salmon and other fish. He also always had fresh fruit, and after about a week he started bringing an extra one or two for Betty (“Not just for sailors, you know”).

“I would have got the bird in the air sooner,” she said, curling away the peel of her orange, “but the fuel got contaminated so I lost a day cleaning that up.”

Howard twigged what she was saying immediately, and regarded her thoughtfully for a few seconds while lighting up his cigar.

“You know I have influence here. If you need someone clearing out, you just say so.”

She shook her head. “No. Definitely not. I ain’t gonna be the reason anyone loses their job, they already hate me enough as it is.”

“Alright.” He was still looking at her. “But if it gets in the way of your work, I want to know. So I can rearrange my timetables accordingly.”

Betty nodded. She appreciated Howard’s response. Instead of jumping to his feet or running off to slay an impossible dragon like Steve always seemed to want to do, he seemed content to let her fight her own battles, win in the way she wanted to.

 

* * *

 

It was entirely possible that given time they'd get bored and leave her alone – in much the same way that Betty would tell Jimmy to expect from the kids at school – so on the whole Betty adopted the same principle that she counselled in her kid brother – to get her head down and get on with it. She ignored it when it was best to do so – and it usually was.

But sometimes, as she'd tell Martha, you've just got to decide enough is enough and take matters into your own hands, because waiting don't always get the job done.

> (“You know what Sophie Tucker says about show business?”
> 
> Martha was definitely absolutely going to be a famous jazz singer, just like last week she was definitely absolutely going to be president and the week before she was going to marry Simon Proctor from two blocks away.
> 
> “She says success depends on your ability to keep and make friends.”)

So Betty set about doing just that - making friends. And that, as Teddy was finding out in Kindergarten, was a skill in its own right. But it wasn't one Betty had had any problems with in the past, and she wasn't about to let herself down this time.

 

* * *

 

If there was a 'leader' of the younger mechanics at Floyd Bennet – and Betty wasn't sure there really was – then Bert Carbone might be a decent contender. He was smart, talented, and had a sharp wit that had a lot of the boys laughing. He liked the work, and appeared self confident; except when things went wrong or he couldn't figure something and then he'd get frustrated, find somewhere to place the blame – take it out on someone else. Someone like Hank Doyle, for example. The guys wanted him to like them, because when he liked you, he wouldn't turn his temper on you.

He was the kind of guy Steve hated – because he enjoyed being on top, doling out casual cruelties to people he didn't care for, hardly even registering the consequences. In one of the comic books Steve read (In all of the comic books Steve wrote and drew for himself), men like Bert Carbone ended up getting a solid right hook to the jaw and changing his ways forever.

Betty wasn't one of Steve Rogers' comic book heroes.

She found Bert one afternoon, enjoying the sun outside the hangar, smoking a cigarette well away from any of the fuel inside. He glanced up as she approached, looked confused but offered a friendly enough smile.

“What's up, Barnes?”

She shrugged. “Not much. Stark's out making more millions instead of giving me orders. Wondered if you needed a hand with the Dragon?”

Carbone had been fighting with a De Havilland Dragon for the best part of the day, keeping his head down but a scowl visible every time he emerged, trying to solve some problem or other Betty hadn't quite worked out.

He showed a trace of that scowl now. “You know anything about Dragons?”

“Not a damned thing,”

His face didn't change as he blew out smoke and watched her. She grinned.

“But hey, figured an extra pair of eyes wouldn't hurt, right? And I know how much on a tough job it feels like you need three hands just to hold all the tools. You'd be throwing me a bone, anyway. It's that or clock out.”

Finally, Carbone offered a faint smile. “Come and see what you can do, anyway.”

He offered her a cigarette, and she took it, bending towards him and using her hand to shield it from the wind as he lit it.

 

* * *

  
  


“Hey, Betts, who's that guy who meets you after work some days?”

Rosie Jackson effortlessly filled the role of most glamorous lady mechanic on the airfield. She covered her hair with a scarf, like everyone did, but her lips were always red and her pencil thin eyebrows never seemed to smudge with grease like Betty's managed to. She evidently wielded a makeup brush with as much skill as she handled a wrench, and with the same natural grace.

She was touching up her lips while Betty was switching her overalls for a flight jacket, watching Betty in the reflection of her mirror. Betty hung back from heading out to meet Stark, in order to answer her question.

“Steve, you mean?”

“He a steady?”

“Ha, no. A friend.”

“You like him?”

“Oh, Rosie. I love him like a brother. Why? Are you planning to break his heart?”

Rosie couldn't smile without smudging her work, but her eyes danced.

“I just never see you with any guys aside from him and Mr. Stark. And I know you ain't that dumb.”

(It was true, you had to be a special kind of dumb to think Howard was anything but bad news. Thank God Betty never found herself in his sights.)

“I'm a bit busy for stepping out, right now. Ask me again when I've got my licence.”

“But Steve is available?”

Betty laughed at her.

> (“What?”
> 
> “I said I'd ask.”
> 
> “Me?”
> 
> “Don't do that to yourself. You're a catch.”
> 
> “I don't know, Bet. Can't she find a guy at the airfield?”
> 
> Two weeks later, Rosie had.)

 

* * *

 

Ben Wilson had a terrible habit of forgetting where he put things. This didn't bother Betty, who had her own work to get on with and didn't need to know where Ben Wilson had left his pliers. What did bother her, though, is when Hank Doyle emerged from behind her tail fin and scurried away with a grin on his face. She traced his route back and found those pliers left on a wing – not in the way of the engine, but enough to implicate either her or Wilson in interfering each other's work.

She strolled out holding the pliers above her head and whistled shrilly. “Hey, Wilson, lose something?”

Wilson run over gratefully. Rosie smiled at her before turning back to her work. Carbone raised an eyebrow, and gave Doyle an annoyed glance. Doyle scowled at the ruination of his fun. No one laughed, because nothing was funny. Wilson continued to lose things, but they only ever turned up where he left them.

 

* * *

 

 

Betty couldn't spend all her time making friends, though. She hadn't been brushing Rosie off about the licence – she needed that private pilot's license not just for solo flight hours but because a qualified pilot could negotiate a bigger paycheck from her employer than a trainee. Learning to fly wasn't as taxing as learning to maintain an airplane, but it never became something she just took for granted. She convinced herself that she couldn't _really_ be a pilot until she stopped gasping in delight every time the ground dropped away and the air caught her.

But She couldn't put it off forever.

After an hour of fear colder and deeper than even her first life-changing flight with Howard, Betty landed, received the nod from her examiner, and suddenly became aware of a roar of applause from the hangar.

Her colleagues had been watching, waiting, and apparently rooting for the same little girl they ridiculed and leered at. It wasn’t just the men who she’d seen usher the boys away from her and back to work: it was the boys themselves.

Eddie Matthews, who had only ever spoken to her to point out whenever she’d made a mistake in her work, came running out to meet her. And for a second, even with the cheers, Betty was honestly scared he was going to hit her, until he threw an arm around her shoulder and raised his other hand to his friends.

“Let’s hear it for the Floyd Bennett Bombshell!”

If Betty hadn’t already been flushed with the excitement of flying and the stress of being tested, that would definitely have done it. She laughed, and accepted the shoulder claps, and even the smacks elsewhere, in the spirit of congratulations.

The _Floyd Bennett_ Bombshell. That was the start.

She laughed when someone made a joke at her expense (if it was funny.)  She smiled and offered thanks when someone complimented her figure or her walk. But she winked and said ‘you’d expect nothing else,’ when someone admired her handiwork or her flying.

Betty was good at her work, and always had a good word for her friends, so slowly, man by man, she made more of them. Stark’s little Bombshell was becoming o _ur_ Bombshell.

 

 


	3. I'm Not Getting Thin, But I'm Keeping My Shape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a new acquaintance is made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait! But the bright side of putting off this chapter for so long was I had a chance to reference (but not spoil!) an exchange in CW :)

  **July, 1936**

 

"Get you a dog?"

"Huh?"

"Do you want a hot dog, Bet? I'm wasting away."

Betty glanced up at Steve – he'd been taller than her for a year now, and her decision to go low on the heels today didn't help. She then rolled her eyes meaningfully down his frame and up again.

"Where do you put it?"

"I'm a growing boy, I need food, okay? I'm getting a hot dog." He rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a quarter, which he turned back and forth in front of her to catch the light. “Look, it's on me. Let me treat you.”

Betty rolled her eyes as hard as she could in the bright sun. As he cantered off, she yelled after him: "Mustard on mine!"

Hey, she worked hard during the week. She deserved a hot dog.

Steve lifted a hand to indicate that a) he had heard and b) he didn't care to turn around, and Betty strolled off in the opposite direction towards the beach, whistling  _Amy, Wonderful Amy_ to herself. He'd find her when he had food.

"Hey, doll."

There was a clump of boys loitering by the sideshows, where Playland met the boardwalk. One of them perched on the boardwalk railing, his bright red hair flashing in the afternoon sun. He leered at her through shining blue eyes, confident that the chisel in his jawline and the charm in his smile would offset the rudeness of his greeting.

Betty didn't have anywhere to rush off to, so she slowed to a stop, brushing a hair out of her face. "Hey, yourself."

"Having a good day?"

"Not having a bad one." She glanced towards the food stall, but Steve was still in line, protesting ineffectually when someone cut.

She looked at the would-be gentleman addressing her – a full head taller but maybe a year or so younger than her, he was thin had the same hungry look she herself had probably worn more often before finding work. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and the arms underneath were wirey, yet shaped from hard work. They were also turning pink, and she predicted he'd probably regret the decision to bare them in a few hours. Right now he was getting the best out of what muscles he had, hooking thumbs in his belt and folding his elbows forward to give her the best view, as he bounced off the railing to come closer to her. His friends laughed and turned away, leaving them to it.

"William," he said. "Friends call me Will."

"Betty." She broke out a smile. "You from Queens, Will?"

Steve found them ten minutes later at the shooting gallery, Betty feeding Will nickels as he lined up shot after shot. He looked askance at her, and she quickly raised a finger to her lips and gestured to him to stand back. He hung back just long enough for Betty to run to the end of her cash, until Will finally shot the bullseye and fistpumped the air in victory.

His prize was a stuffed Teddy bear with a feminine blue ribbon tied around its neck, which he ceremoniously presented to Betty. "My lady."

She grinned, bowed slightly in receipt, and in thanks offered a kiss on his cheek. They parted amiably, Will bringing a tale of victory back to his friends, Betty carrying a bear about the size of her baby brother.

Steve had already started eating her hot dog, but swapped the remains to carry the bear as they headed towards the subway.

"You could've won it yourself in half that time," he remarked. "Cheaper, too."

"But what's the fun in that?"

He rolled his eyes at her, and she smiled brattily at him, until he put a hand out to her. "You got train money?"

Betty shook her head. "Not funny, Steve."

"What?"

They both stopped, staring at each other.

"No way those hot dogs cost a whole quarter."

“There was a kid on line in front of me didn't have the full amount."

"So you thought you'd just strand us here with no way home?"

"Says the gal with a flush job. How much did you give that fellow? You know the guy's supposed to pay for his own shooting tickets, right?"

She glared at him.  
He glared at her.

They started laughing at the same time, and Betty punched him in the shoulder and grabbed her bear back.

"So now what do we do?" Steve asked.

Betty looked around, weighing up her options, hoping that maybe this sun had brought other Brooklynites down to the Rockaways, so she might see someone she knew to grab a loan from. That, or she could pull a damsel in distress act on some young stud or other.

Her eye was caught, however, by a smooth red Cadillac convertible gliding carefully through the foot traffic on the road, only occasionally begging a clearway with a hesitant horn. It pushed through at a walking pace, the driver studying the pedestrians carefully, before it eventually drew to a halt by Betty and Steve.

"Ah, now,” said the driver, a stiff gentleman in his mid twenties, with a thick British accent, “wait."

Betty looked at Steve. Steve looked at Betty. The driver looked at a photograph stuck to his dashboard.

"Excuse me, are you Elizabeth Barnes?"

Steve looked at Betty. Betty didn't know where to look.

"Who's asking?" She had barely spoken the words before she knew the answer. Who else would it be?

 "You're coming with me, I'm afraid," the Brit said. "Howard Stark needs you."

 Betty looked at Steve. Steve looked at the sky.

 She shrugged helplessly and wandered over to the car, leaning over the passenger side door. "Give me a nickel?"

 The driver blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"

 "A nickel. You've got a nickel, right?"

 He hesitated, but eventually handed her the coin, which she flipped into the air and tossed at Steve, who caught it before it hit between his eyes.

 "Go tell Ma I won't be there for dinner."

 The upside of this was that Edith would probably insist Steve stay for dinner to eat up Betty's portion, and he wouldn't go back to his apartment – empty save him for going on a year now – and spend the evening rattling alone inside it.

>  ("How was it?"
> 
>  "It was okay. She's next to Dad."
> 
>  "Steve..." Betty put a hand out to stop him, made him turn to face her. "You should know... if you asked, I'd say yes."
> 
>  He'd stared, then laughed, shaking his head as his gaze dropped. "That is the worst idea you've ever had, Bet."
> 
>  He was probably right, at that. She'd allowed herself to laugh with him, until his laughter seemed about to become tears. Then she'd kissed him on the cheek, and he held her tight to him, so she had to speak directly to his ear.
> 
>  "Either way, I'm with you 'til the end of the line, pal.")

With Steve on his way back to Brooklyn, Betty tossed the bear into the rear seat and hopped over the door into the shotgun position. The driver started slightly, staring at her and the bear for a second each. She wondered if he expected her to ride behind him like she was Howard Stark.

"There's a document on the seat behind you that you'll want to read," he said, and started the engine. Betty twisted onto her knees and reached back to grab the wad of paper in question. It was letter size, folded in half and bound down the middle, filled with densely typed notes alongside Howard's precise technical drawings. A glance at the first page confirmed what it was: a flight manual for a plane she didn't know.

"Who are you?" Betty asked as they drove on. She slumped down into the seat, raising her feet up onto the dashboard to cradle the manual on her lap. The move earned her a horrified look.

"My name - “ he spared his hand from the wheel in order to shoo her feet down - “is Edwin Jarvis. I'm Mr Stark's new butler, and apparently chauffeur to his employees, which I have to say wasn't made clear in the job description."

"Having my day off cut short and being summoned from the beach wasn't in my job description, either. Howard does what he does."

"As I'm rapidly finding out," Jarvis answered dryly. "It seems a certain level of flexibility is going to be imperative in this role."

"You'd better believe it."

 "You know, I could have given your young man a ride, as well," Jarvis continued. "I'm sure Mr Stark wouldn't mind a small detour."

Not bothering to acknowledge the assumption, Betty shook her head. "Steve'd hate the gesture. He'll take a nickel for the subway, but he doesn't need favours from my boss."

"I see."

It was a loaded comment, and Betty found herself frowning because she couldn't figure out what he'd loaded it with.

Jarvis peered at something in his mirror and continued: "I hope you don't think me too forward..." He hesitated, already deciding it was too forward. Out of spite, Betty let the half-finished sentence hang, forcing him to figure out how to continue.

"...it's just that if my starting salary is much to go on, I'm willing to assume Mr. Stark pays a wage high enough that you shouldn't need to beg nickels for train fares home."

Betty considered her answer. "You got family, Ed?"

If he cared about the familiarity, he was too British to let it show. "Unmarried as yet, Miss Barnes."

"I got two kid brothers and a sister," Betty said. "Pa's got a steady job, but he didn't always have. Teddy's seven and he's got a real habit for those little steel cars, you know them? Martha's dolls have dresses she makes from specially bought cotton instead of cutting up her cast offs. Jimmy starts high school in fall, and will probably be able to graduate without needing to quit for a job.

"And I'm gonna own my own plane, some day. But none of that's possible if I don't watch out for the nickels."

Jarvis smiled wryly out at the road ahead of them.

"With all that, I confess, I admire that you take the time for days out at the amusements."

"Ha, well, I don't get many days off, and you got to make the best of it, right?"

"Right."

Betty smiled, finding herself warming to him. "Anyway, it was Steve's birthday last week – the Fourth?"

"Ah, yes."

"...and going down to Rockaway or Coney Island or one of those places is kind of a tradition. We've been doing it since we were kids together. And these days we don't need to save for it weeks in advance."

"I see."

That time it wasn't loaded. He appeared to be on the same page as her with what Steve was and wasn't.

"He's lucky to have a friend like you."

Betty shook her head, turning down to the flight manual in her lap. "It's the other way round."

A few seconds later, she added: "And you know who IS lucky to have me? Howard Stark, that son of a bitch."

Jarvis seemed to suppress a smile. Betty lifted the papers from her lap and waved them at him to make a point.

"This thing is ridiculous. You know how many mechanics there are at Floyd Bennet who'd put up with his bizarre notions? Not a lot. And even fewer pilots would fly the damn things untested. On paper, this is a death trap."

"Nevertheless, I expect it's a death trap that you'll be flying soon enough."

She shrugged helplessly. "I trust him. Well, I trust his brain."

 There were a lot she wouldn't trust about Howard, but his mind never failed her.

 

* * *

 

Whatever Howard needed Betty for urgently, it could apparently wait until after supper, as they stopped at an automat in midtown . Betty took the flight manual, and Jarvis took the bear. 

"We can't just leave it there for any ragamuffin to help himself," he said. Though Betty suspected it was just because it amused him to sit it at the table while the two of them helped themselves to potpie and au gratin and Betty had herself two helpings of Jell-O.

 "Hey, how often does a girl get to eat out?" she protested. Even though the Rockaway hot dog was still taking up room, she was going to make up for missing dinner.

 Jarvis was more sparing in his appetite, and he sat a little stiffly, but he smiled readily enough as they discussed how Howard had hired him on one of his trips to England. He was taking them more and more these days, and Betty now learned that this was because of a growing friendship with some British politician.

 "Mind you, I couldn't presume to know what they talk about behind closed doors, but with the situation in Europe..." Jarvis trailed off when he saw Betty's pointedly blank expression. "Ah, you are not interested in global politics?"

"It's not that I'm not interested," Betty said hastily. "It's just I get it enough from Steve – and I know Howard's got his concerns," which he never voiced out loud to her, but she was becoming a bit of an expert at reading what Howard Stark wasn't saying, "but I don't need it from both directions, you know?"

It wasn't even that she disagreed with Steve's opinion that what they saw on the newsreels was worrying. But Steve's father went to Europe before and came back in a box, and Sarah would talk about what a great and brave hero he was. Betty's father went to Europe and came back with both his arms and both his legs, but Edith would talk about the man who left New York like he was a different person. Betty couldn't remember it, but she was the only one of all her siblings who'd even heard that Fred Barnes hadn't always had a hollow look in his eyes and a tendency to melancholy.

It was selfish, she knew, but Betty wanted more than anything to avoid Steve, Jimmy, or (Heaven forbid) Teddy ever having that same look in their own eyes.

She said none of this out loud, and Jarvis' acquiescent nod very simply acknowledged a pretty girl's right to not be bothered about politics from all sides. He fished about for a new subject.

  
"This Steve... Is it presumptious to assume he is the knight errant who won this prize for you?"

Betty grinned around a mouthful of chicken at the turn of phrase. "Nah. That was an Irish kid called William. Wanted to make himself feel good by impressing a dame, so I volunteered."

"Very charitable of you," he said, amused.

"I thought so," she replied. "And I got a bear out of it, for only three times the price I'd pay for it downtown."

“Quite the bargain.” She liked him better when he was amused at bears than when he was fumbling an introduction from a car. He seemed more relaxed.

“How about you, Ed?” Betty continued. “Unmarried, I got. But is there a lady you'd spend all your pennies at the amusements for?”

“Not as yet,” he answered. “Not a lady in particular in any case. Though I admit I am hardly a stranger to – if you'll pardon the expression – spending a penny or two on Brighton pier for the sake of impressing a new acquaintance.”

(It would be some months of knowing Edwin Jarvis before Betty would discover that the reason he smiled wryly and begged her pardon was because in England 'spend a penny' was another way of saying 'take a leak.')

“Bet it made it easier to move to New York with no attachments.”

“Quite.” He looked down at his fork, held in his left hand with the tines arching downwards, a piece of potato speared on the end and cheese sauce carefully loaded on the convex side. It was an unexpected moment of melancholy and Betty wondered what he'd left behind. Then without warning, his demeanour relaxed again and the potato found its way to his mouth. “The wage Mr. Stark offered didn't hurt his case, either.”

 

* * *

 

 

The sun was significantly lower in the sky when they left the automat and drove to a long narrow park on the West Side that Betty didn't think was supposed to be an actual airfield. The grass was well kept and green - except for the scar left by a steep descent and short landing, which probably hadn't done the landing gear any favours. Still, the plane itself looked in good shape, although taking off was going to need the full length of the strip and even then, she thought, there would be no for error before she tumbled tail over nose into the Hudson. 

She had to admit it was a great view over the river, which had been taken into account when laying out a lavish picnic spread on a red and white checked blanket. Howard's flight jacket and hood lay discarded to the side, as the man himself lounged casually against the hamper, one arm cocked gently around the light brown curls of the woman lying her head against his knee. He looked up when Betty and Jarvis arrived, and she sent him a quick, vicious frown to let him know exactly what she thought about being summoned like this. He merely wrapped his gratitude in a smile.

The lady stirred, and pulled herself to look over. Betty quickly erased the expression from her face and smiled sweetly.

 "Howard," said the brunette lightly, "is this your pilot?"

Feeling kind of like she should salute, Betty let Howard answer for her. "Sure is. Bombshell Barnes this is... Vicky." ("Victoria!" that lady corrected him, with a exasperated giggle. Betty figured she hadn't noticed the moment it took him to remember her name.) "Bombshell's also my private mechanic," he added, beaming at Betty like she was some sort of prize winning show poodle.

"Is that true?" Victoria asked, her head tilted curiously, her stare direct. "But you're so pretty."

This was really why Betty tried to keep Steve away from... not Howard exactly, but the people who came in a package with Howard. Victoria's comment caused Howard smile to freeze momentarily, and Betty wasn't sure if Jarvis reacted at all, but she chose to give Victoria the benefit of the doubt and smiled back.

"Thanks! But this - " her floral print dress, long but light cotton, over stocking-less legs because who has time for stockings in New York in July? " - isn't usually what I'd wear to get my hands dirty." She wasn't even wearing gloves today, so the coarseness of said hands was on full display, but they were, at least, impeccably clean. "Today is my day off." She turned her sweet as funnel-cake smile on Howard, who had the decency to look like he knew he'd made an unreasonable demand.

"But you know I'm good for time and a half, right?" he offered, and Betty merely nodded. “You're a peach, Bombshell. Just leave her in the hangar and I'll introduce you two properly tomorrow.”

Betty pointed at the plane. “I assume you mean  _this_ her.” Not that she necessarily resented Victoria going for a test flight before she had a chance to. She knew that, given a chance, she'd happily use the growing fleet of aircraft at her disposal to impress a beau. Except she'd at least finish her romantic escapades at an actual airfield, rather than having it valeted back like one of his cars.

Victoria giggled, her cheeks flushed from sun or champagne, and leaned back against Howard's shoulder. "Does your driver being here mean we're taking the car back to yours?"

She seemed to be done with talking to Betty.

Howard nodded, brushing her hair from her face gently. “Getting a bit chilly out here, isn't it?”

Betty rolled her eyes at Howard's practised smoothness and caught Jarvis' eye where he was bending over to pack up the picnic. She nodded at the backs of the lovers' heads and gave him a look that threatened the careful blankness of his poker face. He took a second to compose himself again and beckoned her over to the Cadillac, indicating that she might as well make herself useful and bring the empty ice bucket with her. On popping the trunk, he presented her with a flight jacket, hood and goggles of her own.

“What, no pants?”

“It seems Mr Stark failed to consider that you might be enjoying your day off at a beach in the middle of July, while inadequately stockinged. I must apologise for our employer's shortsightedness, Miss Barnes.”

“Eddie, we have the same boss. We're colleagues, right? I'm not Howard. You can call me Betty.”

 “Strictly speaking, Elizabeth, as I am Mr Stark's butler, and you a mechanic, I outrank you and you should refer to me as Mr. Jarvis.”

 Betty narrowed her eyes at him. His mouth twitched again, and she decided that probably meant he was joking.

 “Betty,” she said firmly.

 “Edwin,” he replied.

 

* * *

 

 

The cockpit of the death trap smelled like expensive ladies' perfume, and Betty decided she'd have to air it thoroughly at Floyd Bennett. But the controls looked exactly as Howard's notes painted them, and she reckoned she could figure them out before drowning in the river. Just as Betty was climbing in, she heard a delighted squeal from Victoria.

“Oh Howard! What an adorable little bear!”

She decided to add it to expenses.


	4. We Have Watched and Waited Since the Day You Made Your Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a job interview

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a playlist for this AU here: https://open.spotify.com/user/innerbrat/playlist/1eJNT371SloT4wH6MxZv9A. It's not just the time covered so far, but covers a lot of Winter Soldier-y stuff as well.  
> (Though any shippy feelings from the playlist shouldn't really be considered canon...)

January, 1942

It hadn’t snowed for two days. What was on the ground had been cleared and was mostly in out-of-the-way heaps waiting for an eventual thaw. More importantly, though, the sky was no longer overcast; while there was a strong wind, the air was clear and the visibility high. Which was why Betty had taken the first opportunity to get _Horse Feathers_ into the air, nipping out onto a runway before scheduled flights.

She traced a wide circle around the borough and into Queens. There was no particular flight plan today other than to get up and enjoy the solitude for an hour and to see if the Brooklyn Bridge had disappeared since the last time she was up here. All the while, investigating the handling of her current favorite toy.

Sure, Howard Stark might have claimed it was his baby, this little prototype that was supposed to be faster than a Warhawk, but this particular model had been fine-tuned by Betty, and she’d clocked up most of its hours. Since Howard had flown it into Floyd Bennett last month, she’d been the only person inside it at all. This was by her own preference - she hated when people messed with her stuff - but also by Howard’s orders. Only Betty and Howard knew the specifications of the supercharger purring beneath her seat at this moment, and only Betty and Howard knew that the strange angles of the airframe were supposed to make it more difficult for the new RADAR technology to pick up. Only Betty and Howard, in fact, had any idea that this was a fighter in the making.

“She's a work in progress,” Howard had said. “I’ve got a few avenues to explore to make sure we win this war, but if I leave this with you, at least we’ll know how well it can fly, right?”

So in theory, that’s what Betty was doing - flying the _Feathers_ around when she could to check how the shape affected handling, and occasionally writing notes to send to him. He was... actually, God only knew where he was right now. Before December 7th, he'd been spending a lot of time in England, working with the same friends he'd spent much of the thirties with, on projects that weren't aeronautic and therefore about which Betty didn't care. Since the attack, he'd never once mentioned to Betty where he was or what he was working on. Though, as he'd taken to calling Floyd Bennet on the telephone to give her orders, and on the one occasion he'd gifted her a new plane to work on, she assumed he was, if not in the city, at least in the state - or at a push, Jersey.

Meanwhile Betty had done her own tinkering on the _Feathers_ , and Howard would be able to help when he next visited; their main aim for this machine was to make the engines as close to silent as possible.

 _And_ , she thought, _VTOL would be nice. A long-shot, sure. But nice_.

Although Betty did wonder if vertical take-off and landing would ruin the feeling of take-off for her: that second when she and the plane would be scooped up by air pressure and fall into the hands of the wind. That moment that Betty’s breath would catch and her heart would leap and then suddenly she’d be flying, laughing inside like the first time she’d ridden the Cyclone at Coney Island, knowing that the seat she was in could hold her safe. In that second, even now, she still felt like a little girl again.

Once she had established that all the bridges over the East River were present and accounted for, Betty swung around Prospect Park and back to Floyd Bennett with the rest of the day planned out in her mind - she’d fix the slight listing the Feathers was showing and write up a flight report, adding some notes for things for Howard to fix next time he was in town. Then she’d do some daily maintenance on the rest: he was currently keeping four different airplanes there and Betty had direct and total oversight for that small private fleet.

Then she’d head towards home, and maybe drag Steve out to the movie theater if she was out in time. Betty Grable and Tyrone Power were at Cranberry and Orange, and she was pretty sure he wouldn't say no to that.

When she did land, her plans were instantly scrapped by the appearance of a boy in a smart looking uniform standing at the edge of the runway, talking to Eddie Matthews. Eddie waved at Betty as soon as she got out of the plane, beckoning her over urgently.

“Hey, Bombshell! Telegram for you!”

The stranger - a boy of about Martha’s age – glanced at Eddie as if he wasn’t sure if he should comment on the name or not before turning his full attention to Betty. “Uh... Miss Elizabeth Ross Barnes?”

“That’s me.” Betty patted down her jacket. “Aw, shit. Hey Eddie, lend me a nickel, would you?”

Eddie paused and regarded both Betty and the telegraph boy like he had all the time in the world to decide whether Betty deserved to get her message. He did eventually find a coin tucked in his pocket and gave it directly to the boy, who thanked him and then handed the telegram itself to Betty, despite Eddie’s outstretched hand and his apparent assumption he’d get to read it before its intended recipient.

“Who’s it from?” Eddie withdrew from the attempted interception and instead offered Betty a cigaratte as a peace offering.

Betty opened out the telegram, revealing a whole page of type, and read the first line:

CONFIDENTIAL.

She quickly scanned the rest and folded it back closed, tucking it into the pocket of her flying jacket.

“Well,” she said cheerfully, helping herself to the smoke as if she didn’t have two pairs of eyes watching her intensely for other news, “I’m clocking off early. Cover for me?”

“Your boss isn’t on site, Bombshell,” Eddie pointed out. “There’s no one to cover to.”

While this was true, it was part of the unwritten rules of the airfield. If someone had to clock off early or run an errand, the other mechanics would between them cover by explaining he’d ‘just gone for a leak’ or ‘was having a smoke.’ She’d been part of it, but hadn’t actually used the system until now, when she was definitely absolutely going home right this second.

“Oh come on, Bombshell,” Eddie implored her as she strolled away, whistling _Sing as We Go_ on her way towards the airport building and the way home. “What was in that? Who was it from? Where the hell are you going?”

“Where am I going?” Betty spun on her heel and walked backwards a few steps, facing him and throwing an amateurish salute. “I’m going to serve my country. When are you going to sign up?”

* * *

... ON BEHALF OF BRITISH AIR TRANSPORT AUXILIARY I AM WIRING ALL THE WOMEN PILOTS WHOSE ADDRESSES AVAILABLE TO ASK IF YOU WOULD BE WILLING TO VOLUNTEER FOR SERVICE ...

Betty’s motorcycle was waiting for her outside the terminal building. She jumped on to it and started out of the airfield, turning the words of the telegram over and over, losing herself in the implications.

...EVERY FRONT NOW OUR FRONT...

It had been just over a month since Europe’s war had become America’s war - become the world’s war. Almost overnight, she’d gone from overseeing a fractional part of Stark’s fleet of aircraft to what in all but name amounted to test piloting this war plane prototype. Edwin had been on indefinite leave from his employment since the invasion of Poland. It didn't look like he was going to return soon.

... MUTUAL FRIEND HS SPEAKS HIGHLY OF YOUR CAPABILITY ...

She’d gone with Steve to sign up for the army, only to have him emerge defeated and declared “unfit for service.” This hadn’t surprised Betty, who had grown up watching out for his breathing difficulties, and who was only shorter than him by an accident of sex, but it had devastated the boy who lost his parents to the Good Fight.

... FLIGHT EXPERIENCE WITH COMBAT PLANES ...

She’d listened at home as the conversation carefully manoeuvred around signing up and the draft. This was down to the combined efforts of both Jimmy and her father, one of whom acted indifferent, the other acted aloof, but who were both desirous of the same thing: that the STSA would continue to affect other people, and Jimmy would go as long as possible before it was his number turning up.

.... VISIT 630 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK CITY FOR MORE DETAILS CALL TO ARRANGE ...

She’d assumed that at some point she’d get a telegram or Stark would show up in person and whisk her away to his factory to work directly on the planes he was producing for the war effort. She hadn’t expected - hadn’t even imagined - that Jackie Cochran herself would send her a telegram, and invite her to actually fly in service to the Allies’ cause.

RELEASE NO PUBLICITY AS A RESULT OF THIS TELEGRAM.

* * *

 

Rifling through her thoughts, Betty rode all the way uptown to Brooklyn Heights. There weren’t many motorcycles in her neighborhood, much less with women riders, but the neighbors were long since used to Betty’s presence, and she had a usual spot, the snow cleared out just enough to fit herself in. Looking up at her apartment, Betty spied Martha, her hair covered by a scarf for housework. She shook a dishtowel out of the window and waved down. Betty waved back, then jerked a thumb in a different direction before heading off herself down the road, towards Steve’s place.

‘Confidential’ surely didn’t apply to him.

Steve's apartment door was unlocked and Betty let herself in. She nudged his boots together by the doorway as she kicked the slush off her own. Picked up his coat and hung it on the hook, fluffed a cushion from his couch before she sat down. The apartment was a little colder than was probably good for him, and the sort of dirty that a man living on his own seemed to produce – at least according to Edith, whose experience with the homes of single men Betty didn't often question. Martha had offered to come around and clean for him, but he insisted that there was nothing he couldn't do for himself.

"That you, Bet?" He was in the bathroom, probably freshly home himself. She answered in the affirmative and picked up his sketchbook from the end table, flicking through it while she waited to see what he'd been up to. A few concepts for some war story he was working on for some publishing company in Manhattan, a tank from about seventy different angles, and a stunning pencil rendering of Gary Cooper and Joan Leslie as Sergeant York and Gracie.

“What’s up?” Steve was standing over her, still buttoning his fly.

She produced the telegram from her jacket, and handed it up to him, not taking her eyes off his sketches. “I just got a wire from Jackie Cochran.”

“The pilot?”

“You know of any other?” She prodded the folded paper towards him, insisting that he take it. And so Steve Rogers became the first person, other than Betty herself, to read the telegram from the greatest woman pilot in the United States.

She dropped her indifferent pretence and sucked on her lower lip as she watched him read it slowly. Then, with a fixed, thoughtful expression, he read it again. It tore at her heart a little, made her feel a little guilty about the whole thing, but that didn't stop her from wanting to share it with him. Only when she was about to grab the telegram back and pretend she'd never shown him, did it seem to dawn on him what it meant, and his warmest smile began to spread across his mouth.

“What’s the name of that plane the British have?”

“Spitfire?”

"Are you going to get to fly that?"

She grinned. "Maybe."

"That's great, Bet." She appreciated the effort he put into smiling on her behalf. Then every doubt was gone, and he pulled her on her feet and into a tight congratulatory hug, with such force that she was sure that if he was bigger or stronger, he'd have her lifted off her feet. With a girly squeal, she made up for the effort with a small hop off her feet and into his arms, laughing from the sheer joy for what this meant: the chance to fly the famed British warplanes, but also be recognised for that by someone other than Howard Stark and Steve Rogers.

 

Her father was less understanding. He held out his hand for the telegram, and read it carefully before handing it to her mother.

“This isn’t what we meant when you started this,” Edith said, chewing her lip.

“No one wanted another war, Ma.”

* * *

She used the phone at the corner store to call Howard's apartment uptown, and was relieved when her hunch was right and he answered. He confirmed his willingness to release her for service, and during the conversation he offered the unaskable - to maintain her current level of pay until the British Government officially became her employer. She offered feeble resistance to the idea, but they both knew it was for the show of it. Betty’s family had come to depend on her pay, at least until Martha could finish high school.

“Knock ‘em dead, Bombshell,” was the last thing Howard said before he hung up.

Betty smirked at the phone as she pulled down the hook and released it, immediately dialing the operator and asking for Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics at 630 Fifth Avenue. There, she spoke to a rather skeptical lady who, after putting Betty on hold to check with someone, reluctantly scheduled an appointment with Ms Cochran next Tuesday at eleven o’clock sharp, and then rang off.

The next day was Saturday, and Edith and Betty spent all day down on Fulton Street, returning late in the afternoon and spilling shopping bags into the apartment. Jimmy, standing in the entranceway and adjusting his tie for an evening with his fiancee, shot them both a questioning look.

“New clothes,” Edith explained. “For Tuesday.”

“It’s just an interview, Ma,” Jimmy objected. “She don’t need to be kitted out for vacation.”

“An interview with Jacqueline Cochran,” Edith pointed out, stressing the name and sending a meaningful look towards the floor in front of the fireplace where Teddy was rearranging his scrapbook, ready to mount the telegram from the lady herself opposite some of the newspaper clippings collected over the last few years. “At the Rockefeller, no less. And we want her to make a good impression.”

“She can make a good impression by flying,” Jimmy countered. “It’s not gonna be the turn of her heel that gets her in the air. You don’t wear nylons in the cockpit, do you, Bets?”

Betty reminded herself that grown women don’t kick grown men in the shins, even if they were their bratty little brothers. Instead she stepped over her shopping, and pulled him away from the mirror to fix his tie properly. “I guess you won’t be interested in the vest and tie we picked out for your wedding?”

Jimmy was instantly suspicious, visibly fighting to stay contrary. He glanced at their father, sitting on the couch and watching the scene with some amusement.

“Don’t look at me like that, son. It’s her money, she can spend it how she wants.”

Jimmy’s wage had brought the salaries coming into the family up to three, but it was soon going to be going to another family. Betty had reluctantly given up saving for a plane of her own, given that wasn’t likely to happen before she turned fifty. An interview suit for her and a treat for the rest of the family, on the other hand - that would hardly be a problem.

She smirked at Jimmy, and then reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out a box of cigarettes and his lighter. She helped herself to one of the former, pushed a second one into his mouth and lit them both, a gesture of sisterly reconciliation.

“We got you a new shaving kit, Pa,” she added. “And Murray’s pomade for the both of you. Even a new pair of gloves for Martha.”

Martha had commandeered the table, spread out with clothes that Betty did not quite need to replace yet, but that had been identified as being in sore need of a darning needle. She had her chair set directly under the lamp, and was curled up around Betty’s flying jacket. At the mention of gloves, she held up her work triumphantly, sucking blood off the callus on her thumb.

“I should think so too, the things I do for you. Do you appreciate what it is to darn leather? Take a look, Betty Barnes, and marvel at my work.”

Blowing smoke out of her mouth, Betty inspected her jacket, and conceded that it was indeed a mend that would have been hard to identify had she not been familiar with the damage already.

“You are a miracle worker, Martha,” she said, kissing the top of her sister’s head. “I will make sure to send all my clothes home for the darning.”

Her mother gave her a sharp look, but Betty grinned at her, assuring her that she was only teasing, and would be doing all her own mending on the field – if, of course, she did indeed end up shipped out to England.

* * *

"So are you joining the army?"

Rosie Jackson found Betty hunkered down in her flight jacket under the wing of the _Feathers_ , staring at nothing much on the side of the plane as she mentally catalogued her work on it. In the event that she really didn't have much longer to work on it, she'd need to let Howard know what she thought and what she needed him to do, and that required getting everything in order.

She broke her stare and shot a sideways look at Rosie standing above her. "Jesus, this place is like my Mom's knitting circle."

"Is it true though?"

Betty shrugged. "Well, not the US Army – the Air Transport Authority with the British. And I gotta pass the interview first. And it's supposed to be confidential. I'm going to get Eddie for that." She yelped sharply when Rosie kicked her in the hip. "What was that for?"

Reluctantly, Rosie crouched down next to her. "You only went and put ideas in people's heads. Bert went and signed up on Saturday."

"No kidding? USAAF?"

Rosie nodded. "Ground crew, but with the option to sign up for flight training. So he might be fighting by the end of the war – we'll see."

There was something in her voice hiding under her non-committal resignation. Betty tilted her head.

"Sorry, Rosie."

Rosie's mouth twitched. "Well, it's good for the boy to get some purpose, I guess. And he did propose last night."

So _that_ was what Rosie was angling at. Betty laughed. "So you're going to be patient wife waiting for him to come home safe?"

"Well, fiancee until he gets back. Probably. I haven't answered yet..." She left it hanging, watching Betty for a reaction. Or her opinion.

Betty could guess at the reason for the hesitation. Rosie's family weren't the biggest fans of Bert Carbone, partly because the man wasn't particularly likeable, but a big part of it was that he was white – and more than that, Italian. "Won't be easy," she offered.

"What is easy these days?"

Betty thought about Rosie – about her love of the work, about the dozens of heads she turned daily, and the array of options available to her that weren't Bert Carbone. And about her family, who like Betty's, were proud of her despite not really understanding what a girl could find so fulfilling about grease and wrenches.

"Look," she said finally. "You remember Molly Bygraves?"

Molly had been a mechanic at Floyd Bennet until six months ago, when she'd married one of the other mechanics. None of the girls at the airfield had been invited to the the wedding.

"Heard she was pregnant now. Guess she's happy." But Rosie sounded doubtful – and particularly doubtful that she'd be happy in the same situation.

"Well, Bert Carbone's not exactly a Prince, but I'll say this for him – he's never going to tell his fiancee she can't work. At least until the war's over, and even then, I bet he'll let you make up your mind."

"Huh." Rosie looked down at her hand, presumably picturing what it would look like with a ring on it. "I guess so." She suddenly grinned, and her voice cracked with happiness. "I guess I'm getting engaged."

Betty looked over her shoulder to the hangar. There was a clump of men standing outside it and smoking, and Betty was unsurprised to see that Bert at the edge of it, sending them worried glances. She nudged Rosie in the shoulder.

"You better go tell him before he chickens out."

* * *

 

Tuesday morning, she left on time to arrive at Midtown about an hour early. She took the trolley across the bridge to Manhattan, and then crowded on to the subway with a bundle of other travellers, pushing her way through as cheerfully as she could manage so that she could lean against a wall rather than stay jammed up against the door. It was a claustrophobic, bad smelling experience made interesting only by the gentleman sitting on the seats who glanced at her ankles, then scanned up her legs to touch his hat at her when he reached her face. She shot him a bright, confident smile through the trim on her own hat. He looked like a well-paid office worker, and if he smiled at her like she was one of the girls from the typing pool, instead of a mechanic from Brooklyn dressed up in her only pair of nylons, then she wasn’t doing too badly.

Despite the early start, somehow she still ended up spilling out onto Fifth Avenue just as the bells at St Patrick’s were starting to chime eleven. Unable to run in her heels - and very much aware that she didn’t need to get any more red in the face than she was - Betty adopted a half walk - half run that was more like a stumble, across the promenade and through a heavy rotating door to the imposing entrance hall.

Behind an expansive, high-topped reception desk, sat a woman with chocolate brown hair in tight pin curls that Betty didn’t think she’d be able to manage without at least an hour spare in the morning. She was reading something below the desk, but looked up to watch Betty walk in with a curious look that reminded Betty that she was in clothes not four days old, bought on Fulton street rather than Fifth Avenue.

Betty responded to this by straightening, tucking a stray hair under her hat and smiling a wide, friendly grin. She had to rise on her feet slightly to lean on the desk, and recognised at the bottom of the newspaper on the receptionist's lap a small cartoon that had Steve's clean, earnest style to it.

“Bett... I mean, Miss Barnes here for Ms. Cochran? “I’m late, I know,” she added, with a quick grin. “I don’t know how that happened, I left plenty of time.”

"That's the subway for you," said the receptionist, mildly, turning the page before Betty could identify the cartoon in question. She offered Betty a professional smile and looked her name up in a big black ledger. “I swear it eats about a half hour of my morning every day.”

“Right?” Betty grinned at her, relieved.

“You’re not running as late as Ms Cochran, anyway.” She pinpointed Betty's name and marked it with a pen. “Take a seat, and she'll send for you when she's ready. And - oh, there’s a ladies’ room just that way.”

She touched a finger to her lower lip, and Betty realised she might have chewed off half of her lipstick.

“Aw, nuts. Thanks.” She nodded at the woman and hurried off to freshen up. The bathroom was about the size of her family's entire apartment, and boasted comfortable chairs as well as a low table set aside from the wash area, in front of a large, full length mirror. Trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of a whole seating area in a bathroom, Betty removed her coat and folded it on the table.

As she peered over her shoulder at the mirror, checking the straightness of her seams, Betty thought of James and reminded herself that _the state of her nylons don’t affect the state of her flying_. The money behind a business like Cochran Cosmetics was what gave Jacqueline Cochran the time and the opportunity to own planes and become the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic. Betty’s time in the air was no less time in the air because Howard Stark paid for it, not herself.

She shrugged at her reflection. Better not to give the rich lady pilots the opportunity to find that out, right? She used some of the time she now found herself with to remove her hat and smooth out her hair, before reapplying her make-up as carefully and as accurately as she could. All the time she was trying not to think of the fact that she was about to meet the owner of a cosmetics company, who presumably surrounded herself with women who were professionals at this.

More composed, and much more cheerful, Betty emerged from the ladies with her coat and hat in her arms, and shared a warm smile with the receptionist before sitting down.

It was only a few minutes before a woman emerged from the elevator, holding a thick paper file and and – Betty noticed because she had it on her mind – not much makeup evident on her face at all. "Elizabeth Barnes?"

"Here," Betty stood, possibly a little too eagerly, and thanked her lucky stars she hadn't said 'present' like at roll call.

“Are you ready to meet Ms Cochran?”

“I think I’d rather be bailing out at one thousand feet,” Betty offered weakly.

The woman didn’t laugh, but she looked like she appreciated the attempt anyway. "I'm Mary Nicholson, Ms Cochran's personal secretary. I'll be taking you up."

And then, with no more build up at all, Betty was standing behind Ms Nicholson as she knocked on the door of a meeting room which contained the cosmetics businesswoman, millionairess, and one of the most famous pilots, male or female, in the world.

“Come in.”

The secretary opened the door just as Ms Cochran was standing up from a behind a large wooden table, leaning over it to offer a hand. Back home, Teddy’s scrapbook was filled with pictures of a glamorous aviatrix with perfect poise and a warm smile. But the woman greeting Betty now had an intelligence to her eye, and a sharp efficient air. She was in her early thirties, maybe, and the smile she offered wasn’t the polite grin from the photographs, but a soft, business-like expression accompanied by a careful examination of the woman in front of her as the two of them shook hands.

“So you’re Stark’s little Bombshell? Take a seat, won’t you? Would you like a drink?”

The table was flanked with leather backed wooden chairs, and Betty sat in one of those. She nodded, then decided that wouldn’t do and added: “Yes, thank you. Whatever you’re having.”

Mary fixed two drinks from a bar in the corner, while Cochran offered Betty a cigarette, making her lean forward to take it and share a light. She sucked on the smoke thankfully, and sat back to accept the drink. She scratched the back of her ankle with the top of her other shoe, was mortified when she felt the nylon catch on her laces, and stopped immediately.

It was the nickname that had done it. She’d long ago started answering to ‘Bombshell’ more often than her own given name, but these days it came from her fellow engineers and pilots at Floyd Bennett. Howard used it, he always had, but he used it in the same tone that Steve called her ‘Bet’ - a teasing, affectionate tone. The boys at the airfield used it in much the same way, grinning around the words, proud to have her among them. She was their Bombshell. Floyd Bennett’s Bombshell.

She thought she was long past being Stark’s Little Bombshell. Long past the assumption that she was some crazy project of a man with more money than sense, a silly girl as a passing amusement. The phrase carried weight of ‘ _what does she think she’s doing here?_ ’ and ‘ _why doesn’t she stay in his bed where she belongs?_ ’ Betty breathed in the smoke, and let it flow back out into the room. None of that mattered. It really didn't.

She wasn’t only Stark’s Little Bombshell, she was his _pilot_.

“So why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Cochran asked finally, holding her cigarette between her index and middle fingers, and using her thumb to flick the first loose pieces of ash into the tray.

There wasn’t much to tell, Betty thought. She shrugged where she sat. “Well, Ma’am, I grew up in Brooklyn, where I live now, and I’ve been flying for Mr. Stark for about ten years now. I’ve got a degree from Polytechnic, too.”

“So I hear.” Cochran was leafing through papers on her desk, and Betty recognised the Stark Industries letterhead. “Howard must have recognised something in you, to sponsor you through that.”

Ten years ago, Betty might have mumbled something like ‘thank you,’ and tried to be modest about it. Now, she tucked a stray curl back behind her ear and grinned. “Well, Ma’am, I am in charge of all his planes down at Floyd Bennett. I figure he thought it a good idea that I know what I was doing.”

Cochran smiled again, and this time her lips almost parted, almost making it a grin. “And he doesn’t have a problem surrendering you to the British?”

“No, Ma’am. I guess he wants to help his country, give what he can to the war effort. Giving up one of his engineers is the least he could do.”

“Oh, I think he’s doing more than that.”

 _Giving up more than an engineer_... Betty almost laughed in her face. She caught herself, and then really did laugh when she realised what Cochran actually meant.

“You mean the planes Stark Industries is making for the Army.”

“Of course, what else would I...”

Cochran stopped herself short, looking at Betty, who smiled back sweetly, a blush creeping up her face, and not quite sure how offended she should be.

“... Miss Barnes, do you think I care if you’re sleeping with him?”

Betty, expecting a question like this, but not phrased in that manner and certainly not this early in the interview, paused to give it some thought. “Well, I thought you’d _care_. I wasn’t sure if you’d _ask_. The answer is no, if it matters.”

“Have you ever wanted to sleep with him?”

She seemed so genuinely interested, that Betty answered without even thinking about it. “Can’t say that I have. I’ve always been more interested in his planes than his bed.”

And then Cochran leaned back in her own chair. “Good, because otherwise I’d say you were a fool for not acting on it. By all reports he’s a very good lover.”

Betty found herself completely unable to contain her laughter, and almost choked on her cigarette as the snickers fell out of her. Cochran smiled herself and took a drink of her whiskey.

“So why do you want to join the Air Transport Authority, Miss Barnes?”

“Well,” Betty's elbows were on the table now, a drink in one hand and her cigarette in the other, “I guess I should say the same thing I just did about Mr. Stark, shouldn’t I? About wanting to serve my country, do my bit in defeating Hitler.”

“Is that true?” She sounded amused.

“Yeah, of course it is,” Betty said. “But really, Ms Cochran, even if I didn’t love my country, and even though Mr Stark's planes are pretty good, I’d jump at any opportunity to one day fly a Supermarine or a Hawker.”

There was a laugh, finally.

From then interview descended into conversation about planes, and further into chatting about their flight experience, and stopping just short of actual gossip. Betty left with a bounce in her step, despite the catch in her nylon, and a promise that Jackie Cochran would let her know when, exactly, she would be joining other American pilots in Canada for training and ground school before the final selection were shipped out to England.

But first she had to talk to her father. Tell him that the thing he had been dreading since America joined the war was going to happen - he was going to lose a child overseas. The fact that it was his eldest daughter, not his elder son, only made it worse.

Fred Barnes had seen war. He didn't want his Betsy to see the same.

He’d been quiet since the telegram. When Betty returned from her interview triumphant, it was like a cloud obscured everything about him that made him her Pa. He sat in his chair to hear the news, and said nothing.

“They’ve got these new planes,” she explained. “Hurricanes and Spitfires. Mr. Stark says he can get his airplanes flying faster, more powerful, but the British have the best right now, and I might get to fly them.”

He said nothing.

“I’ll still be paid. Mr Stark will pay my usual wage until I’m signed up with the British, and then I’ll be earning the same as the ladies.”

He said nothing.

“It’s just transportation, Pa. No fighting, I promise. No one’s daft enough to let a woman near the battlefields. But with women ferrying the planes, there’ll be more men available to fight.”

He said nothing. But he did stand up. Betty looked at him, and she wondered what she was seeing, whether it had something to do with that other war.

Betty threw her arms around her father’s neck. “I’ll make you proud, Pa.”

He squeezed her tightly, so much so she almost complained of the pain.

“You just make it through in one piece, my girl. I’m already proud.”


	5. Love and Laughter and Peace Ever After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which goodbyes are not said.
> 
> (And canon finally happens)

 June 1942

Everything already looked different.

Betty swept her borrowed Texan down over what had been, only a few months ago, the only airfield she’d ever landed in. She had only spent a few months away, but there were already entirely new buildings set up around the field – new hangars set up by the navy, who had taken over the municipal airfield since she left.

She identified herself to the controllers, and smiled when she heard a familiar voice – one of the radio operators from civilian days had evidently signed on to continue his service in the navy.

“Welcome home, Bombshell.”

She smiled. For the first time she was experiencing what the girls in Canada often talked about – what it felt like to be really “coming home.”

After the pleasant surprise that had been Jacqueline Cochran, meeting the rest of the hopeful American ferry pilots had been a mix of joy and intimidation. Everyone had been more or less friendly, all carried away in their shared love of flying, and even though no one had been the out-and-out snob Betty had expected, she had found a very obvious gap between herself and even the poorest of her fellow pilots.

“You’ve never owned your own plane?” Deirdre Morrison had asked her, eyes wide with surprise. “How did you afford to hire for enough hours to qualify?”

Betty had raised an eyebrow. “Honey, I couldn’t afford a single hour’s hire at the rates they charge.”

“So you got by entirely on charity?”

Betty could feel the redness creeping up her face, but before she had a chance to say anything, the silence that descended on the mess hall did the job for her. Deirdre had immediately paled and raised a hand in apology.

“Jeez, that came out wrong, didn’t it?”

That had been the start and the end of it. When Betty was up in the air it didn’t matter. She could fly as well as anyone, and her ground school scores were among the highest, thanks to the years of arguing with Stark about engineering and plane design. As the numbers of women in the pool dropped from an initial seventy-five to less than thirty, Betty stayed, thrilling on every flight and finding that she improved with every chance to practice on the new planes. And even though she’d never before flown any further than was possible to still get home in time for dinner, she found that she felt at home among ladies who had achieved several international length flights.

They had all heard of Stark, of course. Many were quite fond of him by all accounts, and Betty had found his regard had worked more in her favour than against it. More significantly, many of the women had spent time at Floyd Bennett itself, prepping for long flights or even record attempts,and recognised Betty by reputation – the Bombshell name occasionally got thrown around in the hangars, and they were amused to put a face to the name.

Even those that had only heard of the airfield in question, knew of it in enough to question her:

“Did you ever meet Amelia?”

“Does staring at her from behind the wing of my plane while she walked past count as meeting her?”

“You didn’t say anything?”

“I was sixteen. Give a girl a break.”

“What about Amy?”

“ _Her,_ I met. But only because Howard knew her. The picture she signed is my brother Teddy’s prized possession.”

Cochran’s esteem went a long way, as well. Betty was beginning to suspect, despite their leader’s reluctance to talk about her background, that it wasn’t _that_ far away from Betty’s own humble origins at all. The biggest difference seemed to be that Betty hadn’t married the billionaire in _her_ life.

Part of her did still worry about her new friends might think, if they knew that their humble little Bombshell still gasped in delight when her wheels left the ground.

The ground juddered her back into the hard reality of terrestrial life, and Betty and the Texan slowed down together from the thrill of the air. The warmth of the homecoming feeling didn't completely disappear, but it waned significantly when she climbed out of her plane to a hangar full of faces she didn’t recognise.

The navy had commandeered the whole airfield, and most of her friends had joined up in one of the armed forces, or had found work elsewhere. She knew from resigned but terse letters from Rosie Jackson that, while the Army was recruiting female ground staff, she hadn’t made up her mind due to the formalised segregation conditions. Rosie was working as an auto mechanic up in Crown Heights, which she said she enjoyed, but Betty had an idea where she might eventually make her decision.

Betty slung her bag over her shoulder, shook her hair out of her flight helmet, and started towards the exit to the hangar. Naval ground crew around her turned their heads and whistled, an attitude that reminded her more of her early days at the airfield than what she’d expected recently.

“Who’s the broad?” she heard someone mutter, with no care if she heard. “How did she get permission to land?”

“One of Howard Stark’s girls,” came the answer, bitter and insulting.

Five years ago, Hell, even six months ago, Betty might have flushed at that. But she didn’t acknowledge them, heading towards the door being held open for her by an officer bearing an insignia of Naval Aviator. He also didn’t look _happy_ to see her so much as tolerant of her presence.

“Mr Stark is waiting for you outside, Flight Sergeant,” he said, and she saluted, considerably less sloppy than the last time she’d performed the gesture in this airfield, to Eddie.

“Thank you for your hospitality, sir.”

She felt, rather than saw, the mood of the navy crew around her shifting slightly when she was given a rank.

Sure enough, parked obnoxiously outside the hangar like it was his own driveway, was one of Howard Stark’s personal Cadillac, along with the the man himself. Howard was leaning against the side and smoking a cigarette, and grinned when he saw her, looking past her to the NA and nodding his gratitude.

“Can’t thank you enough, pal,” he said breezily.

“Where…” Betty started, but Howard shook his head sharply, cutting her off.

“Welcome home, Bombshell. Shall we make a move?”

Betty bundled herself through the door Howard was holding open for her into the back of his car. There, sitting in one of the forward facing seats, was an elderly gentleman she didn’t recognise, who smiled at her amiably, touching the brim of his cap in acknowledgement. Edwin was still in Europe, but the driver behind the glass was wearing a hat and a uniform that looked military.

She set her bag on the seat opposite the other passenger and sat next to it, as Howard threw away his cigarette and followed her in. He sat facing her and leaned past her to tap the driver on the shoulder to move on.

“Bombshell Barnes, may I introduce Doctor Abraham Erskine,” he said, immediately bringing out his silver-and-brass cigarette case and helping himself to a second. He offered one to Erskine, who declined and Betty, who accepted.

“It is an honour to meet you, Miss Barnes,” Erskine said, offering her a hand. He had a thick accent, but his English was fluent. “I have heard so much about you from our friend here.”

She leaned forward and shook the offered hand. “Are you German, Dr. Erskine?”

“Ah, that is something they always ask,” he said, but didn’t seem too offended given the directness of the question. “And the answer is ‘not anymore.’”

That was good enough for Betty. She smiled at him again, and turned her attention to Howard, raising an eyebrow for permission to ask the question he’d cut off before.

Howard leaned over towards her, using his lighter to light her cigarette, and acknowledged the silence he’d forced her into.

“You can ask it, Bombshell.”

Betty breathed in deep and sat back against the seat. “Where the hell is my plane, Stark?”

“The _Horse Feathers_ has been relocated to a different location,” he said. “While we work out some of the design flaws, it’s a military secret, and the property of the Strategic Scientific Reserve.”

“’Military secret,’ huh?” she said. “You got it invisible yet?”

“Not yet,” Howard said casually. “I’ve been kinda sidelined by another project right now.”

“If you let anyone else fly that thing, Howard Stark, I promise I’ll kill you.”

Erskine chuckled. “And now I see why you call her ‘Bombshell.’ No wonder you wanted her back for the Exposition.”

She shot him a grin and addressed Howard again. “Okay, so tell me what you want me to do. Something about a car, your letter said?”

“If you’d be up for it,” Howard said, easy as anything. “I want to showcase the very best of American technology, the future we’re working towards. And I have this model I want to display. A flying car.” She frowned at him, but he continued, finding his stride: “It’ll be a real show. I come on, surrounded by girls, and we bring the light up on this vehicle - a beauty, if I say so myself - with you behind the wheel. I’ll do a little spiel about the wonders of the future, and then... you start hovering in the air.”

Betty stared at him. “I’ll actually fly?”

Howard coughed on to the side of his fist. “I said 'hover.' A foot off the ground, assuming the propulsors don’t give out. Which I’m eighty percent certain they won’t.”

“No.”

“ _No?_ ”

“I’m not driving your toy car, Howard. You didn’t call your star flygirl – sorry, your _Bombshell –_ home to sit prettily in a thing that barely even works. You’ve got showgirls for that.”

Howard didn’t even look disappointed. “Then how would you like to show off a prototype of my new vertical take-off and landing?”

“VTOL? Seriously?”

“VTOL. It’s not what I’d call fit for service yet, but it’ll do for a showcase. If you’re a good girl, I’ll let you fly it.”

She grinned. “See, I knew we could come up with something.”

Erskine was watching this whole exchange with some amusement. She now acknowledged it, by nodding to him. “Does he give you this much hassle, Dr. Erskine?”

“Oh that and then some,” he admitted. “But you have the spirit to fight back, I see.”

Betty smirked. Howard scowled for some reason, gesturing abruptly at Erskine with his cigarette.

“Don't you start getting ideas about recruiting, Doctor. She's _my_ Bombshell.”

Unsure what this could refer to, Betty just shot him as indignant a look as she could manage.

“Technically,” she said, “as of right now I am _King George's_ Bombshell.”

* * *

After Howard had drawn out her schedule for the next few days, they dropped her at her parents’ door and headed on home to Manhattan. Betty was welcomed home with a large dinner, a lot of kisses, and her very welcome bed alongside Martha’s, where they stayed up late into the night discussing the women of the ATA and all the gossip regarding the people left at home in Brooklyn. She had to be up relatively early to get over to Stark’s and try out the plane he wanted her to showcase, but she didn’t regret a second of it.

It was afternoon by the time she had a moment to herself, and knew exactly who she wanted to spend it with. She found him, unsurprisingly, in an alley behind the Fulton street playhouse, busy being beaten to his knees by some thug Betty didn’t recognise.

“Excuse me, gentlemen?”

The stranger paused, his hand still raised ready to hit Steve again. “This isn’t your problem, sweetheart.”

“No?” Betty stepped forward into the alley, as confident in her dress and heels as she might be in her Sidcot suit. It made the guy pause at last and turn to her.

“No. Unless you want some, too?”

It wasn’t like when they were kids, and Betty could threaten to call an adult or yell at him or threaten him herself. He threatened her, and even though she wanted nothing more than to punch him in the face, she knew that would not only be ineffective, but also actually make things worse. She wasn’t like Steve; she didn’t like being hit.

But she also wasn’t going to let him deal a beating out to her best friend.

So she stood between them, faced the guy, and she smiled sweetly.

And waited.

Eventually he seemed to realise it was either hit a woman, or walk away. And while she wasn’t sure that he _wouldn’t_ hit her, the time it took to make the decision cooled his blood a little. He spat past her, at Steve, and turned to walk away.

Betty spun around and offered her hand to Steve, pulling him up and brushing down the garbage now sticking to his coat.

“Honestly, I’m back for five minutes and I’m already having to play your nursemaid.”

Steve’s face fell briefly, apparently not appreciating her bravery in favour of resenting having to be rescued. But it didn’t last long, rapidly replaced by happiness at seeing her. He clasped her hand in his and squeezed her opposite shoulder in greeting.

“You’re back?”

“Just for the weekend,” she said. “I have to be back in Montreal next week, to catch the boat to Liverpool.”

“England?” To give Steve his due, he at least looked like he was trying to be happy for her.

“I made the cut,” she confirmed. “You’re looking at Flight Officer Barnes, Air Transport Authority.”

“Congratulations.” Still, she heard it in his voice, that plea of _it should be me as well_. But Steve was no pilot, and he didn’t have the health to join the army.

“So,” she said, barrelling over any attempt he might have at self-pity, “you're coming tomorrow to watch me fly Stark’s fancy new plane that I’ve been playing with all morning. But tonight, you and Eddie Matthews are taking me and Connie Robertson out for a good time.”

“I am?” Steve gave her a suspicious look. “Where?”

Betty produced from her jacket the tickets Howard had given her this morning, for the opening of his Exposition at Flushing that evening. She handed them to Steve with a flourish. “The future. Don’t be late, okay?”

* * *

 

  
Connie had been one of the unlucky women who hadn’t made the cut, but she and Betty had hit it off during the time they were classmates. She lived in Greenwich village, and Betty met her at her apartment in a car generously paid for by Howard Stark. Connie, looking modest but cheerful in muted yellow and beige, approved of this wise and clever use of employer’s money as ‘business expenses.’

“So tell me about these guys you’ve found for us?” she asked, winding down the window just enough to flick cigarette ash out into the street. “Which one’s mine?”

“He’s not _yours,_ ” Betty said almost instinctively, and laughed at herself. “Yet, I mean. Steve’s my oldest friend in the world, so don’t go breaking his heart - at least until I’m gone to England and can’t give you a hard time over it.”

Connie turned away from the window, sucking thoughtfully on her Lucky Strike. “You’re not setting me up with a guy who’s going to run off and get himself killed, are you, Betty?”

She shook her head. “No, Steve’s not going anywhere soon. The spirit is willing, you know? But he’s the best man I know. The kind of gentleman you know will always do the right thing, even if it’s not exactly the smartest thing?”

“But can he dance?”

“Of course he can dance. I taught him.”

Connie smirked, and leaned over in the car to nudge Betty in the arm. “That doesn’t mean he’s going to expect me to lead, does it?”

  
  


Steve was waiting at the entrance to Flushing Meadows, under a big sign announcing the WORLD EXPOSITION OF TOMORROW in big flashy letters. Betty waved him over, and introduced him to Connie, with the same sort of apprehension she often felt when introducing a girlfriend to Steve. He had this habit of clamming up around girls that weren’t her, probably mentally comparing himself to Cary Grant or someone.

Eddie, on the other hand, appeared behind Betty with almost no prior warning and lifted her up by the waist, calling her “Bombshell!” and circling her around before putting her down again. It shocked a gasp out of Connie and Steve frowned so hard Betty thought he might start a fight.

Eddie was dressed in his brand new green army uniform, perfectly fitted and very dashing, ready to be shipped out tomorrow. His grin was broad and cheeky, and he extended it to Steve and Connie, shaking Steve’s hand and touching his cap in salute to Connie.

“Shall we?” he offered Betty his arm, through which she slipped her own, taking Connie’s hand on the other side. The opening ceremony was just starting up, and Howard was doing his promised spiel about the wonderful technology tomorrow had to offer, with his chorus girls and his car with four spluttering engines for wheels.

“That’s not what you’ll be flying tomorrow, is it?” Connie asked Betty, and she shook her head just as one of the engines gave way. “Heck no. I’ll be flying an actual plane, trust me. Not some flea circus toy like that. Humor him, though. He’s more entertaining when you do.”

It was a few minutes later that she looked past Connie and noticed that Steve had disappeared. She frowned, and spun slowly on the spot looking for likely targets, until it caught her eye a short distance away: The US Army recruiting station.

Connie followed her gaze. “I thought you said he wasn’t fit enough?” she asked, and the disappointment in her voice was obvious.

“He isn’t,” Betty said irritably. “You guys wait here, okay? I’ll be back before the dancing starts.”

She pushed her way through the crowd and into the tent in time to see Steve about to head in. Darting forward, she just managed to grab his arm and slow him down.

“Hey dummy, do you know how insulting it is when your date ditches you? You’re supposed to be taking us dancing.”

Steve looked past her, at Eddie and Connie, who were making their way towards them. “You go ahead with Eddie. I’ll catch up.”

Betty shook her head. “Come on, Steve. Connie wanted to meet _you_. You’re not seriously going to do this, right?”

“Well, it’s a fair. I thought I’d try my luck.”

“As _who_? Steve from Ohio?”

Over Steve’s shoulder she saw Howard’s friend Dr. Erskine from the car yesterday, peering out of a door towards them. Her voice must have risen louder than she intended to catch his attention, and she checked herself, lowering it to a hiss.

“Steve, don’t take this risk. This isn’t sneaking into an airfield. If they catch you...”

“What, only Bombshell Barnes is allowed to get caught taking risks?”

It was a low blow, and it stung. She’d been lucky, she knew that, that Howard had found her and rewarded her gumption with flying lessons and a job, but she didn’t need Steve to use this against her.

“That’s not what I meant, Steve. These aren’t the same risks, this is _war_.”

“I _know_ that, Betty.”

“Then help out!” she snapped, thinking of Rosie weighing up Jim Crow against her love of engines. “Get a job!”

“What, collecting scraps?”

“To hell with you!” Betty went to shove him back by the shoulders, and caught herself short when she saw watching a man and his girl glance at them as they hurried by. People were looking at them like a quarrelling couple. She made a conscious effort to calm herself down. “What the hell, Steve? You really want to imply that the women, the old men, everyone doing their bit back here - that they’re not doing their bit?”

“Bets,” he changed his tack quickly, and reached for her hand, which she snapped back. “I’m not... I just think...”

“Jimmy’s gone, Steve,” she interrupted. “He shipped out two weeks ago and I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“You think he’ll be back sooner if you go after him?”

“I think I can’t wait around to hear of news. From him or you.”

She stared at him, desperately trying to stay angry, but she _couldn’t_ , not with Steve looking at her like that, almost imploring her to understand.

Was she going to England just to fly Spitfires? Or was she going because she had to do what she could to bring her brother home?

She shook her head. “I was just telling Connie what a great guy you were, too.”

“Maybe I’ll look her up when I get home.”

Betty rolled her eyes. “Don't count your winnings until you've cashed them in, Steve.” She looked over her shoulder, where Eddie and Connie were waiting, standing with a small space between them. She lifted a hand to tell them she’d be there, and turned back to Steve, planting a kiss on his cheek.

“Just don’t do anything too stupid, you hear?”

He gave her a smirk, and patted her on the shoulder. “Nothing more dumb than trusting my life to Howard Stark’s crazy inventions, trust me.”

Steve didn’t catch up with them at the dance that evening. That didn’t matter too much, because Betty was too busy, not just with Connie and Eddie, but with Martha when she turned up without a chaperone, and the remaining men from Floyd Bennett who suddenly all wanted one last dance before Bombshell Barnes left for the rolling English hills.

When he didn’t show at the demo the next morning, she was annoyed. Not surprised, exactly, but definitely, indisputably, annoyed.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, thanks for bearing with! And thanks to Ryfkah for bearing with.
> 
> And ESPECIALLY thanks, not just to Becca, but to everyone who puts up with my rambling about this.
> 
>  
> 
> So since the last chapter, I actually visited Floyd Bennett airfield, and was thrilled to find out that in many ways it was just how I imagined, and in many other ways my research method of "Google, read for ten minutes, then just make shit up" didn't actually work as well as I liked to think it had. Buuuuut hey, the MCU isn't our universe, after all. I hope the joins don't show TOO much.
> 
> If you're ever in Brooklyn doing touristy shit, and you fancy seeing historic aircraft, head on down to Floyd Bennett on a Sunday. You won't regret it (unless you walk there two days after a February blizzard in inappropriate shoes, but what kind of fool'd do that?)


End file.
